British Foreign Policy And The Proposal For An American Mandate For Türkiye

Abstract

This article investigates the debates on the future of Istanbul and the Straits within the British Government during the Paris Peace Conference. Analysing correspondence of British diplomats among themselves, with the Heads of State, with British delegates at Paris, and reports of the intercourse with the US officers at Washington, the article focuses on the beginning of the early debates on the future of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War. This early phase of the Paris Peace Conference, when the nationalist struggle in Anatolia did not yet exist, when the British Forces did not yet formally occupy the Ottoman capital, when the Greek Navy did not yet land its troops in Smyrna, witnessed various proposals on the fate of the former Ottoman lands, one of which was an American Mandate for Türkiye and Armenia. Even though the British Government used to regard the Americans as uninformed in case of the former Ottoman lands, the latter proved otherwise. The US diplomats had been criticizing the British Policy following the war, claiming that the aim of the British Government was to secure the routes to India and newly acquired Afghanistan and constitute a colonial regime in the former Ottoman lands. The aims of this article are to reveal that the US was far from being dependent on the British guidance in foreign affairs following the war and the Americans had already established an active network in the port cities, the Central Anatolia, and the Eastern Anatolia and tried to benefit from the hatred of Britain in the region. In this regard, the article tries to underline the contradiction between the policies of Britain, which tried to reactivate Düyun-ı Umumiye (The Ottoman Public Debt Administration) immediately after the war and the US, which organized trading agencies in the southern ports of the Black Sea. In general, this article suggests the contradiction following the proposal for an American Mandate in Türkiye and Armenia by the British Government as a case study for the interwar period during which the British Empire was about to be replaced by the US as a global economic and diplomatic power.

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